


Counting to Ten in Pashto

by katybar



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexuality, Explicit Consent, Ficlet, John is a saint as per usual, Sorta Fluffy, and people still owe Sherlock favors, but there is a point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 08:05:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katybar/pseuds/katybar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. John Watson sighed.  He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced.  He counted silently to ten.  Backwards. In Pashto.  None of this was working. Because what he needed was to stop obsessing over the tall dark detective he was standing behind, certainly not ogle his shapely arse, and above all steer clear of getting hard.  And all of that was much easier said than avoided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting to Ten in Pashto

Dr. John Watson sighed.  He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced.  He counted silently to ten.  Backwards. In Pashto.  None of this was working.

The world's only consulting detective had just bumped into him, again.  The fifth time in half an hour, actually. Which took even Sherlock's propensity to ignore personal space to new heights.

John figured that if he tried very hard --

Strike that.

Rather, as long as he focused on what was in front of --

No, not that either.

Because what he needed was to stop obsessing over the tall dark detective he was standing behind, certainly not ogle his shapely arse, and above all steer clear of getting hard.  And all of that was much easier said than avoided. 

"John, how am I meant to learn anything with you poking at me?" snapped Sherlock.

Oh god.  "Sorry," muttered John, then reached gingerly around Sherlock to pull his right shoulder back.  "Alright then.  Like this, otherwise you throw off the balance."

"And then?"

"And then when you squat, don't let your knees fall in to the center.  That's not a position of strength in case you need to change your trajectory," John explained in a voice that he hoped passed for patient.  Obediently, Sherlock sank down on his haunches, and John, already hunkered down, got a lapful of shapely arse. 

"Stop squirming, John,” Sherlock commanded. “I had expected army training to be a bit more disciplined."

John extricated himself and stood up, wrestling his breathing under control.  Sherlock sounded innocently offended, but then Sherlock was a very good actor and the two of them were barely a month  into being lovers.  He currently had no clue as to the true state of Sherlock's innocence.

Sherlock retreated a step, his entire backside now pressed against John's front.  "Descriptions are useless, just show me," he persisted, adding with a touch of malice,  "and don't forget it was you who suggested that my shooting stance needed to be realigned."

Well, yes, that was how they happened to be at the shooting range, a revolver in Sherlock's right hand, and Sherlock's arse now back in John's lap.

"Like this, then," John economised on words.  He pantomimed the movements, feeling Sherlock press against him, imitating, but also adding a shimmy that was definitely not army regulation. 

John glanced left and right, hoping that the shooters in the other lanes were too busy with their targets to notice anything.  Then he tried to remember eleven, twelve, and thirteen in Pashto.  Not that languages had ever been his strong suit.  Rather the point, actually.

John didn't know much about Sherlock's history with relationships, but he had worked out a couple of things.  First, Sherlock had experience.   Not a lot, but some.  And second, it had come at a price.  Nobody got that skittish from experience that was good.  Once they had got over the initial euphoria, John had tried to ask.  Sherlock had grated out "abuse doesn't _make_ someone asexual John" and then bitten off whatever would have followed with a particularly mulish expression. So John didn't really know much about Sherlock's prior relationships, but he did know that _he_ would be different.  He would not push, press, or guilt Sherlock, he wouldn't accuse him of teasing, and he absolutely would not turn everyday situations into gropefests.  And when you lived with Sherlock Holmes, everyday situations tended to include getting a pen from his breast pocket or a mobile phone from his trousers.

"John!" Sherlock's voice was in his ear, "I think you're losing focus."

John restrained an undignified giggle, and to his surprise, Sherlock quirked a fraction of a smile back at him.  Emboldened, John drawled "Keep your knees strong, then, and no arse-wiggling, alright?"

"I do not," Sherlock huffed, "wiggle ... anything, John Watson."

And so it went, another half hour of bumping, shimmying, and, yes, wiggling.  By the time Sherlock had made enough progress to not get himself killed, all John wanted to do was crawl out of the shooting range, find a cab, and head fucking straight for the privacy of his own bedroom.  Because push, grope, or guilt, no, but wank, yes, absolutely, yes.  And soon.  Very, very soon.

John looked up with a guilty start to see the object of his lust just inches away.  "Soon?" Sherlock queried with the ghost of a smile.  "What's happening 'soon' John?"

Oh god, had he said that out loud?  Or was it true that Sherlock could actually read his mind?  John wasn't sure which option would be more humiliating right now, and Sherlock's face so near his was scrambling his senses and overwhelming any control he thought he had.  He was standing and staring, and then he was knocked unceremoniously onto the ground and Sherlock was sinking down beside him on perfect knees.  Sherlock was curling on the hard floor next to him and rubbing  his shapely, exquisite arse against John in luxurious extravagance. 

"Sherlock, what the--"

"They're gone John.  All of them." John raised his head and realised that Sherlock was right.  The shooting gallery had emptied out over the last half hour and now it was just the two of them.

"And the manager owes me a favor," Sherlock continued with a developing smirk.

John gaped at him in amazement.

"And I don't think you appreciate just how much I love doing this," Sherlock added with another sinuous squirm.

"Oh I, um.  Appreciate.  I definitely appreciate this.  You." John stammered.

"Mmm," intoned Sherlock.  More squirming.  John's eyes fell closed as he pressed his face against Sherlock's lean shoulder blades, moaning quietly in relief.

"John?"

John groaned.

"John, is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"

John's forehead hit Sherlock's thoracic spine with a certain amount of force.  "Sherlock, that is the oldest..." he trailed off as Sherlock looked over his shoulder, wide-eyed.  "I mean, you do know...?" Sherlock blinked.   John gave it up in favor of enjoying the friction, his hands on Sherlock's arms, then trailing up over his shoulders to settle on those cheekbones.  Sherlock liked that, that much he knew. 

Just about when John's body switched over from 'oh god yes' to 'oh please more', he felt Sherlock turn to face him.  Sherlock's hands gripped his shoulders, then they trailed down his wrists, the palms of his hands, the individual fingers...

"Happy to see me, then..." mouthed Sherlock as he palmed the front of John's trousers, and John endeavored not to let his eyes roll so far back that he would spend the rest of his life blind.  Because this, this was something they hadn't talked about.  They had a method, a procedure, they'd agreed on it.  It involved talking before touching, asking before assuming, explicit consent before anything new. 

Not that John was used to having a procedure.  He'd never had a procedure before, unless intuition and imagination counted.  But on that first afternoon, he'd taken one look at Sherlock's carefully blank face and another at Sherlock's skittish body, and started talking about protocol.  And just now, he'd spent an hour attempting to dissemble blatant arousal, and his procedure was shot to hell, and he wasn't entirely sure that he was physically capable of telling Sherlock to stop.  And Sherlock wasn't stopping.  Instead he had somehow established a pressure and a rhythm that made a handjob through denim feel better than most of what John remembered of oral sex. 

John made an effort to stop moaning long enough to speak.  "You were easier to handle before you got to reading up on sex online,"  he attempted wry nonchalance, only to achieve breathy anticipation. 

"Information on the internet is an oxymoron, John," Sherlock responded idly.

"Yeah?  Well, still … you'd better let me check out the site."

"Whatever for?" Sherlock was gazing at him perplexed, and, more importantly, had stopped moving.  "You're not going to use it on me."

"I might though," answered John.  "If they have tips on arse-wiggling."  A bit of interest sparked in Sherlock's eyes, and John nudged his still-motionless hand.  "But I won't," he continued, "unless you," with another nudge, "start moving again.  Soon."

Sherlock's mouth drifted into the slowest smile that John had ever seen, then his hand came back up to speed almost imperceptibly as John panted and groaned.  After a minor eternity, there was an orgasm that was like nothing John had experienced before.  It was not release -- instead, he felt himself simply dissolving. As if the muscles and sinews that held his body together had dissipated. 

As if he could be inhaled in one deep breath and live inside Sherlock's body, in his blood, forever and amen.

As if his body was settling like dew, refined and distilled and slowly relearning how to feel and how to speak. 

When he finally winced his eyes open, Sherlock was still smiling, but it shifted from smug to shy as he watched.  "Was it all right?" Sherlock wanted to know.

"I, yes.  All right, yes."  John knew there should be some superlatives here, but his mind was not supplying them, so he made do with "Really really yes…. Although you blew our procedure to bits," he rambled.

Sherlock shrugged an eloquent shoulder.  "You're not the skittish one," he pointed out.

John conceded it with a smile. 

"And I’ve spent a lifetime practicing  how not to be seen as a tease," Sherlock continued.

"Waste of talent, then," John felt himself grinning.

Sherlock ducked his head and concentrated on the whorls in John's hair. "I love you," he told them, very quietly.

"You what?"  It was new enough that John still longed to hear it again, but Sherlock huffed a petulant breath and said "You know I hate repeating myself."

"I do know, yeah," John retreated, asking instead, "even when I'm critiquing your stance?"

"Especially when," confirmed Sherlock.

**Author's Note:**

> I just had to look up how to actually count to ten in Pashto. Backwards of course... las - naha - ata - owa - shepaz - penzah - slur - dray - dua - yaw. Just so you know. Also, I love comments!!


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